LifeHacker did a review on the app couple days ago and according to them the pros and cons are –

“Cobook understands what you’re typing based on its format, whether you’re searching or adding new information to a contact. If you type in a phone number that doesn’t exist it’ll offer to create a new contact. If a contact is listed, it’ll offer to add whatever information you’ve put into the search field. Cobook just knows what you’re trying to do. This makes it super easy to find and update your contacts.

On top of that, Cobook pulls data from Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to updated your Address Book without any effort on your part. This saves a ton of time because your updates will involve adding notes more so than it will involve adding phone numbers and addresses.

All in all, Cobook automatically updates your address book for you and makes it much easier to perform an manual updates you need to make yourself. Plus it’s free, and we love apps that both cost nothing and also happen to be pretty amazing.”

whilst the cons are –

“Because Cobook’s interface only lives in the menubar, this poses a few problems. First and foremost, if you want to view contact information while you’re typing in another window, you can’t really do that because clicking away from Cobook will hide the interface back in the menubar. Additionally, Cobook can really only live in one location and can’t be resized. While I like having it tucked away in the menubar, it can be problematic on occasion and it would be nice to be able to switch to a moveable window when needed.

Because Cobook syncs with your social media accounts, you’re letting it change you address book based on what other people input into their profiles. Most of the time this is great because you don’t have to update anything at all, but you also can end up with more information than you want or a different information than you need. This isn’t Cobook’s fault, but it’s something to be aware of when using an app that uses data you don’t control to change the data you do.”

I just installed the beta for myself and will add more of my thoughts to this quick review, what are yours? You can download the beta here at their website.

Web Wednesday – Hong Kong
Tidbits of news about the Internet and digital media in Hong Kong. Brought to life by a lively monthly networking event, held at Lotus Restaurant & Cocktail Bar in central Hong Kong on the first Wednesday of every month. Do pop along to the next event